The Rise of Silas Lapham

8

Aweek
after she had parted with her son at Bar Harbor,
Mrs. Corey suddenly walked in upon her husband in
their house in Boston. He was at breakfast, and
he gave her the patronizing welcome with which the
husband who has been staying in town all summer
receives his wife when she drops down upon him
from the mountains or the sea-side. For a little
moment she feels herself strange in the house, and
suffers herself to be treated like a guest, before
envy of his comfort vexes her back into possession
and authority. Mrs. Corey was a lady, and she
did not let her envy take the form of open
reproach.

"Well, Anna,
you find me here in the luxury you left me to.
How did you leave the girls?"

"The girls
were well," said Mrs. Corey, looking
absently at her husband's brown velvet coat, in
which he was so handsome. No man had ever grown
gray more beautifully. His hair, while not
remaining dark enough to form a theatrical
contrast with his mustache, was yet some shades
darker, and, in becoming a little thinner, it had
become a little more gracefully wavy. His skin
had the pearly tint which that of elderly men
sometimes assumes, and the lines which time had
traced upon it were too delicate for the name of
wrinkles. He had never had any personal vanity,
and there was no consciousness in his good looks
now.

"I am
glad of that. The boy I have with me," he
returned; "that is, when he is with
me."

"I believe
he has gone into nearly everything else and come
out of it. So there is a chance of his coming out
of this. But as I had nothing to suggest in place
of it, I thought it best not to interfere. In
fact, what good would my telling him that mineral
paint was nasty have done? I dare say
you told him it was nasty."

"If Lapham
hasn't prevented it, I fancy it's too late. But
there may be some hopes of Lapham. As for Tom's
throwing himself away, I don't know. There's no
question but he is one of the best fellows under
the sun. He's tremendously energetic, and he has
plenty of the kind of sense which we call horse;
but he isn't brilliant. No, Tom is not brilliant.
I don't think he would get on in a profession, and
he's instinctively kept out of everything of the
kind. But he has got to do something. What shall
he do? He says mineral paint, and really I don't
see why he shouldn't. If money is fairly and
honestly earned, why should we pretend to care
what it comes out of, when we don't really care?
That superstition is exploded
everywhere."

"Oh, it
isn't the paint alone," said Mrs. Corey;
and then she perceptibly arrested herself, and
made a diversion in continuing: "I wish he
had married some one."

"With money?"
suggested her husband. "From time to time I
have attempted Tom's corruption from that side,
but I suspect Tom has a conscience against it, and
I rather like him for it. I married for love
myself," said Corey, looking across the table
at his wife.

She returned
his look tolerantly, though she felt it right to
say, "What nonsense!"

"Besides," continued
her husband, "if you come to money, there is
the paint princess. She will have
plenty."

"Ah, that's
the worst of it," sighed the mother.
"I suppose I could get on with the
paint----"

"But not
with the princess? I thought you said she was a
very pretty, well-behaved girl?"

"She is
very pretty, and she is well-behaved; but there
is nothing of her. She is insipid; she is very
insipid."

"I can't
say that he was. But there is no doubt that the
child is extremely pretty."

"Tom says
there are two of them. Perhaps they will
neutralize each other."

"Yes, there
is another daughter," assented Mrs. Corey.
"I don't see how you can joke about such
things, Bromfield," she added.

"Well, I
don't either, my dear, to tell you the truth. My
hardihood surprises me. Here is a son of mine
whom I see reduced to making his living by a
shrinkage in values. It's very odd,"
interjected Corey, "that some values should
have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never
hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents,
stocks, real estate--all those values shrink
abominably. Perhaps it might be argued that one
should put all his values into pictures; I've got
a good many of mine there."

"Tom needn't
earn his living," said Mrs. Corey, refusing
her husband's jest. "There's still enough
for all of us."

"That is
what I have sometimes urged upon Tom. I have
proved to him that with economy, and strict
attention to business, he need do nothing as long
as he lives. Of course he would be somewhat
restricted, and it would cramp the rest of us; but
it is a world of sacrifices and compromises. He
couldn't agree with me, and he was not in the
least moved by the example of persons of quality
in Europe which I alleged in support of the life
of idleness. It appears that he wishes to do
something--to do something for himself. I am
afraid that Tom is selfish."

Mrs. Corey
smiled wanly. Thirty years before, she had
married the rich young painter in Rome, who said
so much better things than he painted--charming
things, just the things to please the fancy of a
girl who was disposed to take life a little too
seriously and practically. She saw him in a
different light when she got him home to Boston;
but he had kept on saying the charming things, and
he had not done much else. In fact, he had
fulfilled the promise of his youth. It was a good
trait in him that he was not actively but only
passively extravagant. He was not adventurous
with his money; his tastes were as simple as an
Italian's; he had no expensive habits. In the
process of time he had grown to lead a more and
more secluded life. It was hard to get him out
anywhere, even to dinner. His patience with their
narrowing circumstances had a pathos which she
felt the more the more she came into charge of
their joint life. At times it seemed too bad that
the children and their education and pleasures
should cost so much. She knew, besides, that if
it had not been for them she would have gone back
to Rome with him, and lived princely there for
less than it took to live respectably in
Boston.

"Tom hasn't
consulted me," continued his father,
"but he has consulted other people. And he
has arrived at the conclusion that mineral paint
is a good thing to go into. He has found out all
about it, and about its founder or inventor. It's
quite impressive to hear him talk. And if he must
do something for himself, I don't see why his
egotism shouldn't as well take that form as
another. Combined with the paint princess, it
isn't so agreeable; but that's only a remote
possibility, for which your principal ground is
your motherly solicitude. But even if it were
probable and imminent, what could you do? The
chief consolation that we American parents have in
these matters is that we can do nothing. If we
were Europeans, even English, we should take some
cognizance of our children's love affairs, and in
some measure teach their young affections how to
shoot. But it is our custom to ignore them until
they have shot, and then they ignore us. We are
altogether too delicate to arrange the marriages
of our children; and when they have arranged them
we don't like to say anything, for fear we should
only make bad worse. The right way is for us to
school ourselves to indifference. That is what
the young people have to do elsewhere, and that is
the only logical result of our position here. It
is absurd for us to have any feeling about what we
don't interfere with."

"Oh, people
do interfere with their children's marriages very
often," said Mrs. Corey.

"Yes, but
only in a half-hearted way, so as not to make it
disagreeable for themselves if the marriages go on
in spite of them, as they're pretty apt to do.
Now, my idea is that I ought to cut Tom off with a
shilling. That would be very simple, and it would
be economical. But you would never consent, and
Tom wouldn't mind it."

"I think
our whole conduct in regard to such things is
wrong," said Mrs. Corey.

"Oh, very
likely. But our whole civilization is based upon
it. And who is going to make a beginning? To
which father in our acquaintance shall I go and
propose an alliance for Tom with his daughter? I
should feel like an ass. And will you go to some
mother, and ask her sons in marriage for our
daughters? You would feel like a goose. No; the
only motto for us is, Hands off
altogether."

"I shall
certainly speak to Tom when the time comes,"
said Mrs. Corey.

"And I
shall ask leave to be absent from your
discomfiture, my dear," answered her
husband.

The son
returned that afternoon, and confessed his
surprise at finding his mother in Boston. He was
so frank that she had not quite the courage to
confess in turn why she had come, but trumped up
an excuse.

"Well, mother,"
he said promptly, "I have made an engagement
with Mr. Lapham."

"Yes. For
the present I am going to have charge of his
foreign correspondence, and if I see my way to the
advantage I expect to find in it, I am going out
to manage that side of his business in South
America and Mexico. He's behaved very handsomely
about it. He says that if it appears for our
common interest, he shall pay me a salary as well
as a commission. I've talked with Uncle Jim, and
he thinks it's a good opening."

"Yes; I
thought you would like to have me. And besides,
I couldn't possibly have gone to any one so well
fitted to advise me."

His mother
said nothing. In fact, the mineral paint
business, however painful its interest, was, for
the moment, superseded by a more poignant anxiety.
She began to feel her way cautiously toward
this.

"Have you
been talking about your business with Mr. Lapham
all night?"

"Well, pretty
much," said her son, with a guiltless laugh.
"I went to see him yesterday afternoon, after
I had gone over the whole ground with Uncle Jim,
and Mr. Lapham asked me to go down with him and
finish up."

"At Nantasket?"
Mrs. Corey knitted her brows a little.
"What in the world can a cottage at Nantasket
be like?"

"Oh, very
much like a 'cottage' anywhere. It has the usual
allowance of red roof and veranda. There are the
regulation rocks by the sea; and the big hotels on
the beach about a mile off, flaring away with
electric lights and roman-candles at night. We
didn't have them at Nahant."

"Yes, I
think so," said the young man. "The
young ladies walked me down to the rocks in the
usual way after dinner, and then I came back and
talked paint with Mr. Lapham till midnight. We
didn't settle anything till this morning coming up
on the boat."

"What sort?
Well, I don't know that I noticed." Mrs.
Corey permitted herself the first part of a sigh
of relief; and her son laughed, but apparently not
at her. "They're just reading 'Middlemarch.'
They say there's so much talk about it. Oh, I
suppose they're very good people. They seemed to
be on very good terms with each other."

"Plain? Is
she plain?" asked the young man, as if
searching his consciousness. "Yes, it's the
older one who does the reading, apparently. But I
don't believe that even she overdoes it. They
like to talk better. They reminded me of Southern
people in that." The young man smiled, as if
amused by some of his impressions of the Lapham
family. "The living, as the country people
call it, is tremendously good. The Colonel--he's
a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife's
coffee, as if she had personally made it in the
kitchen, though I believe it was merely inspired
by her. And there was everything in the house
that money could buy. But money has its
limitations."

This was
a fact which Mrs. Corey was beginning to realize
more and more unpleasantly in her own life; but it
seemed to bring her a certain comfort in its
application to the Laphams. "Yes, there is a
point where taste has to begin," she
said.

"They seemed
to want to apologize to me for not having more
books," said Corey. "I don't know why
they should. The Colonel said they bought a good
many books, first and last; but apparently they
don't take them to the sea-side."

"I dare
say they never buy a new book.
I've met some of these moneyed people lately, and
they lavish on every conceivable luxury, and then
borrow books, and get them in the cheap paper
editions."

"I fancy
that's the way with the Lapham family," said
the young man, smilingly. "But they are very
good people. The other daughter is
humorous."

"Humorous?" Mrs.
Corey knitted her brows in some perplexity.
"Do you mean like Mrs. Sayre?" she
asked, naming the lady whose name must come into
every Boston mind when humor is mentioned.

"Oh no;
nothing like that. She never says anything that
you can remember; nothing in flashes or ripples;
nothing the least literary. But it's a sort of
droll way of looking at things; or a droll medium
through which things present themselves. I don't
know. She tells what she's seen, and mimics a
little."

"Oh," said
Mrs. Corey coldly. After a moment she asked:
"And is Miss Irene as pretty as
ever?"

"She's a
wonderful complexion," said the son
unsatisfactorily. "I shall want to be by
when father and Colonel Lapham meet," he
added, with a smile.

"Ah, yes,
your father!" said the mother, in that way
in which a wife at once compassionates and
censures her husband to their children.

"Do you
think it's really going to be a trial to
him?" asked the young man quickly.

"No, no,
I can't say it is. But I confess I wish it was
some other business, Tom."

"Well, mother,
I don't see why. The principal thing looked at
now is the amount of money; and while I would
rather starve than touch a dollar that was dirty
with any sort of dishonesty----"

"Besides, he
had talked the matter over fully with James, and
seems to have been advised by him. I can't
understand James."

"Oh! it's
in regard to the paint, and not the princess,
that he's made up his mind. Well, I think you
were wise to let him alone, Anna. We represent a
faded tradition. We don't really care what
business a man is in, so it is large enough, and
he doesn't advertise offensively; but we think it
fine to affect reluctance."

"Certainly I
do. There was a long time in my misguided youth
when I supposed myself some sort of porcelain; but
it's a relief to be of the common clay, after all,
and to know it. If I get broken, I can be easily
replaced."

"If Tom
must go into such a business," said Mrs.
Corey, "I'm glad James approves of
it."

"I'm afraid
it wouldn't matter to Tom if he didn't; and I
don't know that I should care," said Corey,
betraying the fact that he had perhaps had a good
deal of his brother-in-law's judgment in the
course of his life. "You had better consult
him in regard to Tom's marrying the
princess."

"There is
no necessity at present for that," said Mrs.
Corey, with dignity. After a moment, she asked,
"Should you feel quite so easy if it were a
question of that, Bromfield?"

"You feel
about it as I do. Of course, we have both lived
too long, and seen too much of the world, to
suppose we can control such things. The child is
good, I haven't the least doubt, and all those
things can be managed so that they wouldn't
disgrace us. But she has had a certain sort of
bringing up. I should prefer Tom to marry a girl
with another sort, and this business venture of
his increases the chances that he won't. That's
all."

"''Tis not
so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door,
but 'twill serve.'"

"Perhaps that
has saved me some suffering. But you have at
least the consolation of two anxieties at once. I
always find that a great advantage. You can play
one off against the other."

Mrs. Corey
drew a long breath as if she did not experience
the suggested consolation; and she arranged to
quit, the following afternoon, the scene of her
defeat, which she had not had the courage to make
a battlefield. Her son went down to see her off
on the boat, after spending his first day at his
desk in Lapham's office. He was in a gay humor,
and she departed in a reflected gleam of his good
spirits. He told her all about it, as he sat
talking with her at the stern of the boat,
lingering till the last moment, and then stepping
ashore, with as little waste of time as Lapham
himself, on the gang-plank which the deck-hands
had laid hold of. He touched his hat to her from
the wharf to reassure her of his escape from being
carried away with her, and the next moment his
smiling face hid itself in the crowd.

He walked
on smiling up the long wharf, encumbered with
trucks and hacks and piles of freight, and, taking
his way through the deserted business streets
beyond this bustle, made a point of passing the
door of Lapham's warehouse, on the jambs of which
his name and paint were lettered in black on a
square ground of white. The door was still open,
and Corey loitered a moment before it, tempted to
go upstairs and fetch away some foreign letters
which he had left on his desk, and which he
thought he might finish up at home. He was in
love with his work, and he felt the enthusiasm for
it which nothing but the work we can do well
inspires in us. He believed that he had found his
place in the world, after a good deal of looking,
and he had the relief, the repose, of fitting into
it. Every little incident of the momentous,
uneventful day was a pleasure in his mind, from
his sitting down at his desk, to which Lapham's
boy brought him the foreign letters, till his
rising from it an hour ago. Lapham had been in
view within his own office, but he had given Corey
no formal reception, and had, in fact, not spoken
to him till toward the end of the forenoon, when
he suddenly came out of his den with some more
letters in his hand, and after a brief "How
d'ye do?" had spoken a few words about them,
and left them with him. He was in his
shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person
seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered.
He did not go out to lunch, but had it brought to
him in his office, where Corey saw him eating it
before he left his own desk to go out and perch on
a swinging seat before the long counter of a
down-town restaurant. He observed that all the
others lunched at twelve, and he resolved to
anticipate his usual hour. When he returned, the
pretty girl who had been clicking away at a
type-writer all the morning was neatly putting out
of sight the evidences of pie from the table where
her machine stood, and was preparing to go on with
her copying. In his office Lapham lay asleep in
his arm-chair, with a newspaper over his face.

Now, while
Corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway,
these two came down the stairs together, and he
heard Lapham saying, "Well, then, you better
get a divorce."

He looked
red and excited, and the girl's face, which she
veiled at sight of Corey, showed traces of tears.
She slipped round him into the street.

But Lapham
stopped, and said, with the show of no feeling
but surprise: "Hello, Corey! Did you want to
go up?"

"Come along
down as far as the boat with me. There's a
little matter I want to talk over with
you."

It was
a business matter, and related to Corey's
proposed connection with the house.

The next
day the head book-keeper, who lunched at the long
counter of the same restaurant with Corey, began
to talk with him about Lapham. Walker had not
apparently got his place by seniority; though with
his forehead, bald far up toward the crown, and
his round smooth face, one might have taken him
for a plump elder, if he had not looked equally
like a robust infant. The thick drabbish yellow
mustache was what arrested decision in either
direction, and the prompt vigor of all his
movements was that of a young man of thirty, which
was really Walker's age. He knew, of course, who
Corey was, and he had waited for a man who might
look down on him socially to make the overtures
toward something more than business acquaintance;
but, these made, he was readily responsive, and
drew freely on his philosophy of Lapham and his
affairs.

"I think
about the only difference between people in this
world is that some know what they want, and some
don't. Well, now," said Walker, beating the
bottom of his salt-box to make the salt come out,
"the old man knows what he wants every time.
And generally he gets it. Yes, sir, he generally
gets it. He knows what he's about, but I'll be
blessed if the rest of us do half the time.
Anyway, we don't till he's ready to let us. You
take my position in most business houses. It's
confidential. The head book-keeper knows right
along pretty much everything the house has got in
hand. I'll give you my word I don't. He may open
up to you a little more in your department, but,
as far as the rest of us go, he don't open up any
more than an oyster on a hot brick. They say he
had a partner once; I guess he's dead. I wouldn't
like to be the old man's partner. Well, you see,
this paint of his is like his heart's blood.
Better not try to joke him about it. I've seen
people come in occasionally and try it. They
didn't get much fun out of it."

While he
talked, Walker was plucking up morsels from his
plate, tearing off pieces of French bread from the
long loaf, and feeding them into his mouth in an
impersonal way, as if he were firing up an
engine.

Walker took
a draught of beer from his glass, and wiped the
foam from his mustache.

"Oh, but
he carries it too far! It's a weakness with him.
He's just so about everything. Look at the way he
keeps it up about that type-writer girl of his.
You'd think she was some princess travelling
incognito. There isn't one of us knows who she
is, or where she came from, or who she belongs to.
He brought her and her machine into the office one
morning, and set 'em down at a table, and that's
all there is about it, as far as we're concerned.
It's pretty hard on the girl, for I guess she'd
like to talk; and to any one that didn't know the
old man----" Walker broke off and drained his
glass of what was left in it.

Corey thought
of the words he had overheard from Lapham to the
girl. But he said, "She seems to be kept
pretty busy."

"Oh yes,"
said Walker; "there ain't much loafing round
the place, in any of the departments, from the old
man's down. That's just what I say. He's got to
work just twice as hard, if he wants to keep
everything in his own mind. But he ain't afraid
of work. That's one good thing about him. And
Miss Dewey has to keep step with the rest of us.
But she don't look like one that would take to it
naturally. Such a pretty girl as that generally
thinks she does enough when she looks her
prettiest."

"She's a
pretty girl," said Corey, non-committally.
"But I suppose a great many pretty girls have
to earn their living."

"Don't any
of 'em like to do it," returned the
book-keeper. "They think it's a hardship,
and I don't blame 'em. They have got a right to
get married, and they ought to have the chance.
And Miss Dewey's smart, too. She's as bright as a
biscuit. I guess she's had trouble. I shouldn't
be much more than half surprised if Miss Dewey
wasn't Miss Dewey, or hadn't always been. Yes,
sir," continued the book-keeper, who
prolonged the talk as they walked back to Lapham's
warehouse together, "I don't know exactly
what it is,--it isn't any one thing in
particular,--but I should say that girl had been
married. I wouldn't speak so freely to any of the
rest, Mr. Corey,--I want you to understand
that,--and it isn't any of my business, anyway;
but that's my opinion."

Corey made
no reply, as he walked beside the book-keeper,
who continued--

"It's curious
what a difference marriage makes in people. Now,
I know that I don't look any more like a bachelor
of my age than I do like the man in the moon, and
yet I couldn't say where the difference came in,
to save me. And it's just so with a woman. The
minute you catch sight of her face, there's
something in it that tells you whether she's
married or not. What do you suppose it
is?"

"I'm sure
I don't know," said Corey, willing to laugh
away the topic. "And from what I read
occasionally of some people who go about repeating
their happiness, I shouldn't say that the
intangible evidences were always
unmistakable."

"Oh, of
course," admitted Walker, easily
surrendering his position. "All signs fail
in dry weather. Hello! What's that?" He
caught Corey by the arm, and they both stopped.

At a
corner, half a block ahead of them, the summer
noon solitude of the place was broken by a bit of
drama. A man and woman issued from the
intersecting street, and at the moment of coming
into sight the man, who looked like a sailor,
caught the woman by the arm, as if to detain her.
A brief struggle ensued, the woman trying to free
herself, and the man half coaxing, half scolding.
The spectators could now see that he was drunk;
but before they could decide whether it was a case
for their interference or not, the woman suddenly
set both hands against the man's breast and gave
him a quick push. He lost his footing and tumbled
into a heap in the gutter. The woman faltered an
instant, as if to see whether he was seriously
hurt, and then turned and ran.

When Corey
and the book-keeper reëntered the office, Miss
Dewey had finished her lunch, and was putting a
sheet of paper into her type-writer. She looked
up at them with her eyes of turquoise blue, under
her low white forehead, with the hair neatly
rippled over it, and then began to beat the keys
of her machine.